(Zip Comics 003, 1940)
Zambini (the Miracle Man) is on his first vacation in years and Satan, presuming that his guard will be down or that he left his magic amulet at home I guess, decides that this is the perfect time to attack and murder him for being such a thorn in the side of Evil.
(Please note the near-identical guy kind of capering behind Satan's throne up there, as he represents my favourite thing about this adventure, that Satan rules over a nation of devils (the Devil Men) who all look pretty much exactly the same as him. Some of them have red hair or different beard styles, but over all they are the most homogeneous demon army I have ever seen,
Also, I know that trying to formulate a coherent cosmology out of any comic book company's output will be a fool's errand for some time yet, but it's interesting that Satan and the Devil appear to be two seperate entities in the MLJ/Archie afterlife)
In case it wasn't clear up above: I don't think that this is a very good plan on Satan's part. Like, why not attack Zambini while he is tackling another problem instead of while he is having a nice rest? Why attempt to kill him with a tidal wave, the well-known slow and ominous disaster, rather than something quick and sudden that he doesn't have time to react to by, as in this case, freezing the ocean?
Satan's next move is to send some Devil Men to attack Zambini directly (and looking at them here I must say that there are two faces in the devil nation: the classic devil face of the black haired Devil Men and the more cavemanish look of the red haired ones). They fare no better than the tidal wave and are transformed into a flock of presumably infernal penguins that presumably must be bedevilling the seas to this day.
Zambini decides to take the battle to Satan, and here's where I'll give the ol' Prince of Lies a little credit: he did plan for this eventuality, in the form of a really horrible cage that takes advantage of Zambini's weakness to human touch by being made entirely out of human hands. It's honestly one of the worst things that I have seen in a depiction of comic book Hell!
Satan of course follows this up with the worst plan ever devised: he has his guys push the cage into a big fire in an attempt to kill Zambini, without reckoning with the fact that the unprotected human hands will probably be destroyed more quickly than the asbestos suit-clad magician. Sure enough: Zambini emerges from the flames unharmed and strikes Satan dead.
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